I like the Internets ... a lot.

July 2005

07/26/2005

I've been talking about PGSIT so much recently, but I guess I never really said what it is ... well, here's a little blurb I wrote for the IST website about it ... The School of Information Sciences and Technology and the IST Solutions Institute is once again hosting the PA Governor's School for Information Technology (PGSIT). Each year we invite the best and brightest minds from the Commonwealth of PA to take part in a rigorous five-week resident learning experience. Consisting of faculty from the School of IST and 40 rising high school juniors, the PGSIT Scholars are once again learning the ins and outs of the Information Sciences.

The Scholars are here working in teams to solve real world IST challenges, create new opportunities through their community service projects, and learn from some of the top minds in the information sciences. It is truly a life changing opportunity for both the Scholars and the program faculty. This year, you can watch what is going on with PGSIT by visiting the Blogs@PGSIT. Here I am teaching in the IST Building's Cybertorium ...

My class is a modified IST 110 class that I am calling "Web 2.0: The Read/Write Evolution" ... check it out here. Now you know.

07/21/2005

I'm not sure what to make of this quite yet, but from what I have seen (and understood) this could be quite interesting. Its out of the Berkman Center at Harvard Law, so I gotta figure there is something to it ... the H2O Playlist site ... it lets you make playlists of interesting topics that can be shared. I like the concept ... If I get around to it, I'll post more after I've had a chance to bang on it a little longer.

I have been doing research realted to project management toolsets ... I have always been good at keeping track of multiple projects, but the time has come to really upgrade the tools we have in place so everyone at the Solutions Institute can be in the loop. We had been using some decent open source tools to keep track all sorts of things, but the interface seemed to keep us from really taking advantage of the stuff and it was a real pain giving our student workers and clients access to our file shares. Recently I started really looking into the tools that 37signals builds -- both Backpack and Basecamp are very well designed and fit the needs they are addressing. Yesterday we went ahead and got our own Basecamp account and are loving how it all works.

One of the things we wanted was obviously a strong suite of project management tools, but the other reason we went with the 37signals stuff was that it is a lesson in good design. We are moving so much further towards new ways of building interfaces and applications that having these tools gives us a glimpse into the minds of some very smart people.

So far,a day into it, we are really enjoying the tools. It is nice to know we have a document storage solution that is accessible by the team anywhere at anytime, lets all my staff see the big picture, and gives us a way to organize all of our project tasks. Good stuff.

07/19/2005

As soon as my bloglines account came back up this morning I backed up the OPML of my feeds and downloaded NetNewsWire ... this isn't a pitch for Ranchero, but I gotta tell you I am really liking it. I read all my stuff via RSS these days (including all my course work feeds that my students create) and this app gives me the abiltiy to really organize all my feeds exactly the way I like them. I had tried it out before, but it was just too limiting for me to use. It seems as though they've really done a great job with the features and I think I can use it from here on out. Who knows though!

The thing that really kicks ass is the ability to sync your account via standard FTP or a .Mac account so multiple copies on multiple machines are updated ... it'll even track what articles have and have not been read. That is the critical feature for me ... but there are some other cool things. As I use it more I'll let you know how it goes, but for now I am happy and feel (almost) safe using it. Oh, if bloglines wouldn't have come back ...

It jumped out at me this morning just how much I rely on my feeds ... bloglines is where I keep all my feeds organized and I really like the way it works. I've been using it for nearly a year (I think) and my daily dose of sites has grown to around 100. This morning, I couldn't get it to load and FireFox just spun and spun. It then dawned on me that I really don't remember how to use the web the "old fashioned" way anymore ... I mean I can search and find stuff, but when it comes to visiting pages, well that's just crazy. I know I should maybe switch to Safari to take advantage of the RSS features, but there is something sweet about the web-based tools in bloglines -- I use four different machines a day and having to sync all that stuff would drive me crazy. I've also taken to subscribing to my student's work and find it much easier to see who has turned in stuff viaa RSS updates -- if you add in the 40 students who I have right now, my daily dose of web reading is closer to 140 sites ... yikes! Come on bloglines ... I need it bad.

I say bloglines is my new TiVo only becasue I always tell people that TiVo is like a drug -- if you are at all into TV, you will become addicted ... no doubt about it. Spending the morning without being able to see what is new with my nearly 140 friends on the web has given me the shakes.

07/18/2005

Actually my bandwidth is fine, sigh ... but those lucky enough to be one of the popular podcasters included (and featured) in iTunes 4.9 are seeing huge jumps in bandwidth needs. I figured something like this might happen given they are really only linking into people's feeds and not running them off the Apple Akami network. There is a good read over at Wired that discusses it. I wonder what the resolution to this will be?

07/17/2005

I've been tracking this for a while now, but I am becoming more and more interested in this AJAX stuff, AKA Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. I am really seeing it as a major piece to the web 2.0 puzzle -- I know, duh. If you couple that with the whole Ruby on Railsstuff that is going on, you have the building blocks of the new read/write web interfaces. Just thought I'd write that down ... sorry if its old news. I can see how we can use this to change quite a bit in education.

07/16/2005

When we started the Online IST project it was just a course, a set of resources, and a vision (and a collection of courses to come). It wasn’t called Online IST, I was doing what everyone else does, “This is IST 110, but for the web.” As it started to grow and we were thinking about how to get the entire faculty in our system to use the courses I wanted a way to market the whole initiative. I had come from the commercial eTraining world; so the concept was to build each course as if it were a product within a specific line ... I wanted a brand name. A brand name gave us something we could all easily use to discuss all the pieces of the puzzle that makes up our version of an eLearning course -- the course pages, a communication space, a roadmap, support tools, resources, etc ... without a central brand I didn't think we could mount a marketing effort. I know that sounds strange, but that's what was going on – marketing to build utilization and adoption.

Now if you look at learning resources/materials/objects as products, you have to think that we've finally arrived at this point where we have access to an almost overwhelming amount of content. Some content is free, while other stuff is locked down behind authenticated walls, and others still are available from a ton of commercial vendors. It is interesting to me that we have gotten to the point where there is actually as much choice for learning materials as there is for products that sit on the shelves at Target, Wal-Mart, and in a virtual sense Amazon.com. It seems though what we are lacking is a mechanism for powerful brand recognition ... is a brand in a name or the quality … or both? And whose name matters? In my case, I chose to brand around the school in which we were building the materials for (Online IST) ... or is a particular faculty member who is extremely well respected in a field a good source for a brand? Is it the University -- Phoenix, PSU World Campus?

I was reading a great post over at one of my favorite blogs this morning, The Long Tail, called Brands: Think people, not products. One line that really struck me is, "the changing role of brands in an era of empowered consumers." What got me is how savvy our students have become -- savvy consumers of education if you will. What that is telling me is that we -- the so called innovators in this space -- really need to take the next step with our design, our environments, our ability to integrate the social components of learning, and build some seriously strong learning brands that our consumers demand

I've always thought that eLearning/eEducation should be powered by strong eCommerce models ... it is more true now than ever. If you think of the transactional nature of learning and compare it to business it is so similar it is amazing ... it really has me thinking again about how learning objects could be treated as products and take advantage of the tricks marketers use to get us to buy (in the learning world, I've called it adopt) -- think in the e-sense what that is ... ratings, people who bought this also bought this, user feedback, etc. All of this works by the way. Is it fair to say adoption of eLearning materials, methodologies, pedagogy, etc really is a matter of solid branding and marketing? Maybe, I’d like to know what you think … oh, by the way, it doesn't hurt to have world class people behind it all.

Just some morning thoughts while listening to my favorite jazz ... by the way its the people, not the products that I buy to listen to.

07/15/2005

Just a quickie today ... came across this great little article over at Wired today about Jorn Barger -- he only invented the term weblog ... hmm, this is interesting, "A bum in a Google cap. Now there's a sign of the times, I think as he shambles toward me." Its short and a quick read. Check it out.

07/14/2005

This is a very cool little tool from Apple ... The iTunes Music Store RSS Generator ... lots of good uses for this thing, that's for usre. And I imagine most of you know about the LinkBuilder ... both nice little apps.